Veteran receives military honors more than 40 years after death

For more than four decades, a son struggled with the knowledge that his father, an advocate for his fellow veterans, was laid to rest without military honors.

Thomas Brennan Thomas.Brennan@JDNews.com

For more than four decades, a son struggled with the knowledge that his father, an advocate for his fellow veterans, was laid to rest without military honors.

On Saturday, that will change.

A teenager when his father died, Artie Silvia remembers his father, Fred, as a stern but caring and loving man. Joining the Marine Corps in 1949, his father fought in the Korean War and was discharged as a staff sergeant in 1962 after being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Following his discharge, his father opened a tire business, several gas stations, race tracks and motorcycle shops, doing his best to hire newly-discharged Marines so they would have an easier transition than he had.

When his father died on July 4, 1973, his stepmother was named the executor of the estate and chose a standard funeral. It wasn’t until a few years later that his children learned he was eligible for military honors and assumed they had missed their opportunity to request one.

“Giving my father a military funeral is just the right thing to do,” said Artie Silvia, 59, of Jacksonville. “He loved the military and being a Marine, and it is just not right that he didn’t have one of his own. He’s been cheated because a military funeral is a truly incredible and wonderful thing … Everybody who has served should receive one.”

Although not a veteran himself, Artie Silvia volunteers at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Jacksonville as a way to make up for being disqualified from serving due to poor eyesight when he was younger, he said. While grilling at the post, his father’s funeral came up in a conversation with Brian Scarbrough, a former post commander. Without hesitation, Scarbrough vowed to right what he said was a wrong.

On Saturday at 1 p.m., months of preparation will end as kickstands go up on motorcycles as they roll out of the VFW’s parking lot, making their way toward Onslow Memorial Park. Led by an Onslow County Sheriff’s Office escort, motorcycles will rumble through Jacksonville, something Artie Silvia feels will pay homage to a man that he said paved the way for motorcycles to be authorized for use on local military bases.

Fred Silvia will be given a full military burial including the rifle volley salute, the folding of a burial flag and the playing of Taps.

“I’m going to spend the fourth of July anxious as I wait to see my father given what he deserved all along,” he said. “He lived his life for other veterans and at the close of the ceremony, I will finally feel relief. …There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for a fellow veteran and to see veterans do the same for him means more than words can describe.”

His father earned a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and three clusters on his Korean War Medal during his service, Silvia said, describing his father as a “Marine’s Marine.” Until he died, Fred Silvia made every effort to connect with those struggling with their wartime memories, his son said. According to medical records, his father was described as being a “very tense, hostile, white male struggling to control his obviously explosive feelings,” but with time, he managed it well and tried to be a pillar of strength for struggling veterans, Silvia said.

“He cared about his fellow man and I’d seen him give the shirt off of his back for another man,” Silvia said. “He was genuinely a kind person and liked to help other people. …He wouldn’t give up on life because it was worth living. He found a way to move past his demons and encourage others to have a good life.”

Knowing everything that Fred Silvia had done for the veteran community and what he dealt with as a result of combat has always been something Scarbrough said he respected and admired, but it wasn’t the driving factor behind organizing Saturday’s ceremony. His main reason, he said, was because he saw how much it would mean to the family to see Fred Silvia receive what should have been done 41 years earlier.

Being a part of the ceremony is something Scarbrough said he feels obligated to do and hopes that other veterans would do the same for “one of their own.” Whether they died in combat or years after they took off their uniform, veterans, Scarbrough says, are indebted to care for the fallen and their families.

“I hope this ceremony shows America that we are true to our veterans and that they will never be forgotten,” Scarbrough said. “They will always have a family and it may sound cliché, but it’s the truth. They will never be forgotten and will always belong to our brotherhood.”

Paul Levesque, the president of the local Rolling Thunder chapter, said the chapter was proud to be a part of a ceremony to honor Silvia.

“We are honored to be a part of this because part of our mission is to do anything we can to help veterans from every war,” Levesque said. “He’s a veteran and he deserves what he earned. I’m just glad to see he is finally getting it.”